Stewart,

I can't decide if your story makes me want to laugh or cry. It's with watches. It's with cars (I have a story about my '64 Healey for every repair I had to farm out to a mechanic). What is it that makes the people who are supposedly in the business of providing a service so cavalier with the concerns and sensibilities of their customers that, without warning or consent, they fix one thing while destroying another?

It reminds me of an electrician who was completing the installation of a light above the sink during a bathroom renovation. We had waited months to get the sink in, and it finally arrived and was installed. It was perfect. Then the electrician was to complete the trim of the light above the sink. He dropped a tool and cracked the sink below, which he neglected to cover or protect.

When he finished, he asked us to look at his work and approve it. I immediately saw the cracked sink, and asked what happened. He responded, "well, I dropped my pliers, but forget about the sink. What about my light? It's perfect, right?"

When I try to get a repair done on a watch or dash timer, I go through a litany of what I want and don't want. because everyone wants to fix or polish things to make them look pretty.

Scott